


hd 128620

by jjupi



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst I guess, Gift Fic, Probably ooc, idk that much abt voltron's canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-26 13:15:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13236489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jjupi/pseuds/jjupi
Summary: keith likes to look at the stars.





	hd 128620

keith rarely slept. at first he thought it was because his room was directly next to some enormous generator that whirred all night, but then pidge had disabled it for parts one night and keith discovered that he was still wide awake until the early hours of the morning.

maybe it was the whole space-time thing. there wasn’t a natural day-night on the calendar as they weren’t on a planet, so time was arbitrarily decided based on what solar system they were closest to. they had an earth calendar on board to calculate birthdays and such, but it couldn’t be used to estimate anything else. the castle’s internal systems ran on altean time, which used measurements and symbols that didn’t make any sense to keith.

when he was up, he liked to leave his room and explore. even though he’d gotten a good internal map of the ship in the first couple months of being on board, he found new places almost every night for a year. one of his favorite spots on board was a huge planetarium-style room that mapped constellations as the castle passed them by.

that’s where he was tonight. the first time he came here, he didn’t recognize any of the stars he saw, but some of the larger ones were becoming a little more familiar to him now. they were all labelled with numbers instead of proper names. 

_ kq 12893 _

_ gg 848980 _

_ bd 9455 _

today he was lying on the ground in the center of the room, mouthing the names of the stars to himself. usually they meant nothing to him, but then he read one, furrowed his brow, read it twice, read it a third time. 

_ hd 128620 _

he knew that number. centauri a.

that was one of the stars closest to earth’s solar system. they were so close to their home planet that if keith went into the control room right now, he could bring them back in less than an hour. he didn’t really want to go home, if he was being honest. there was nothing for him there, just as there was nothing for him here. but lance, hunk, shiro, and pidge had family there, or at least he was pretty sure they still did. 

he could bring them home for a surprise. it was near the holidays, right? keith wasn’t even certain that the other paladins had contacted their families since they had left earth. he imagined how overjoyed lance’s family would be if they got to see him for the first time in almost two years.

but allura would kill him. there was a reason they never went home, even when it was easy. if they saw their families again then they’d never get back on the ship. they were coping alright now. one hug from their mother or sister and they would be back to square one the second they got back on board, missing them so desperately that they would beg allura to turn the ship around and take them back. 

they’d already been through that phase. lance had only fully gotten through it a couple months ago. it was damn tough being away from everyone and everything you’d ever known, so even though keith didn’t fully understand the feeling, he could sort of empathize. 

and then beyond that there was the tears, which keith was terrible at dealing with. he used to just retreat into the shadows every time lance or pidge started freaking out, because what could he do about it? but then he started sticking around, even resting a hand on lance’s shoulder, saying that it would be okay, even though it was so damn hard to watch him cry. 

he didn’t go to the control room, even though every atom in his body was begging him to. he just stayed on the floor of the planetarium, reading the numbers to himself, trying not to feel guilty when he eventually saw the  ⊙ symbol that indicated earth’s home star flash across the screen and disappear into the mess of constellations.


End file.
